This article compares two currents of thought that are in search of a philosophy beyond onto-theology: the differential ontology of Jean-Luc Nancy and the asubjective hermeneutical phenomenology of Jan Patočka. Both claim that the demise of traditional metaphysics culminates in a new understanding of the “world.” Their reflections on the primacy of the world, on freedom, and on meaning which exceeds rational understanding show remarkable similarities. The discussion of their differences results in a few critical remarks concerning ideas of Nancy.

This article explores the idea of `play' as a metaphor to understand the world as an always presupposed frame of all experiences and appearances. A large part of it is devoted to the work of Eugen Fink, who developed a notion of the world as play, as a speculative idea beyond phenomenology. This article argues firstly in favor of such an effort to understand the world as play, as an alternative to onto-theological metaphysics. However, it argues secondly, that a stronger and more convincing concept of play can be found by elaborating on the views of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jan Patocka. Gadamer discussed `play' as a metaphor for art, while Patocka worked on the notion of `world' as a phenomenological idea that serves as a frame for all experiences. A combination of these two ideas may result in a better alternative to both Fink's approach and to traditional onto-theological metaphysics.

This chapter offers a comparison between Gadamer's hermeneutics and Derrida's deconstruction, with a focus on their differences. The main difference will be found in their understanding of metaphysics and in the status they give to conceptual philosophical thinking and writing. The chapter will start with a summary of the "unlikely debate" of 1981, followed by Gadamer's and Derrida's comments on it and on each other's work afterwards. In addition, two notions will be discussed, "horizon" and "play", that can offer a better insight in the diverse approaches of Gadamer and Derrida. Finally, many lines in this chapter will come together in a comparison of Gadamer's and Derrida's views on metaphysics and on conceptual thought.

This article discusses the Idea of Europe as it is developed within the phenomenological tradition by Edmund Husserl, Jacques Derrida and Jan Patocka. It shows how Derrida and Patocka try to preserve the main elements of European culture, mainly rationality and openness - in Patocka's terms 'the care for the soul' - while at the same time avoiding Eurocentrism. According to Patocka, the care for the soul has been lost in modernity and needs to be restored in a revival of the idea of Europe in post-European times. In line with Derrida and Patocka, it is argued that in today's post-European world a dissemination of the ethical idea of Europe is going on that leads beyond the name of 'Europe,' searching for new singular articulations, for which a renewal of the old notion of 'care' is a good candidate.

Derrida's philosophy is usually known as a form of critique of metaphysics. This article, however, argues that Derrida's deconstructions do not only dismantle metaphysics from within, but also remain in themselves thoroughly, and problematically, metaphysical. Its goal is to determine exactly where the metaphysical features of Derrida's work can be found. The article starts with an analysis of Derrida's understanding of metaphysics, as well as its deconstruction, by explaining the working ofdifferance, mainly focusing on its temporality. Further, it will demonstrate how in the temporization or deferral ofdifferancea metaphysical desire for purity remains effective. In readings of several texts, the mutual interdependence of metaphysics and deconstruction will be sketched. Then the ethical side of deconstruction will be highlighted, both in Derrida's early work as well as in the slightly different elaboration ofdifferancein the later ethical notions like justice, the gift and the messianic. This results in a distinction of three versions ofdifferance. Finally, a critical discussion of the metaphysical side of deconstruction will be followed by a comparison of different readings of deconstruction anddifferance.

In Donner la mort, Jacques Derrida conceives moral responsibility as always characterized by unsolvable aporias. His interpretation of Patocka’s Heretical Essays is meant to underscore this analysis. I would like to show, however, firstly, that Derrida’s reading of Patocka is problematic, because, in Patocka’s view responsibility does not rest on a gift of death but on a gift of love. Patocka’s conception of sacrifice is also different from Derrida’s. I try to demonstrate, secondly, how Patocka’s phenomenology provides a better understanding of gift, sacrifice and responsibility than Derrida’s approach can offer.

Dans Donner la mort , Jacques Derrida conçoit la responsabilité morale comme toujours structurée par des apories insolubles. Il présente une lecture des Essais hérétiques de Patočka, qui devrait renforcer cette analyse. On montre d’abord que la lecture de Patočka par Derrida est problématique, parce que, dans la philosophie de Patočka, la responsabilité ne repose pas sur un don de la mort, mais sur un don de l’amour. Et la conception patočkienne du sacrifice se distingue aussi des analyses derridiennes. On cherche à montrer, ensuite, comment la phénoménologie de Patočka conduit à une meilleure compréhension des notions de don, de sacrifice et de responsabilité que ne le fait la pensée de Derrida.

This article presents a comparison between Ricoeur’s and Patocka’s ideas on the subject as a rational and ethical person. Despite differences in style and interests, their work manifests important resemblances and agreements. The comparison focuses on the primordial embedding of the individual subject in natural and social structures, on the ethical implications of this situation of the subject, and on the differences in both philosophers’ evaluation of modern culture.

This chapter discusses several features of the development of theoretical reflection out of pre-reflective practical behavior through reading passages from the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Patocka. It shows how reflection relates to the horizon of what it reflects and also shows how scientific-theoretical reflection constructs such a horizon by means of abstraction. The chapter provides a distinction between scientific-theoretical and philosophical reflection. It also discusses the rise of reflection out of basic layers of bodily experience, in line with the work and views of Merleau-Ponty. Theoretical reflection has its roots in pre-reflective behavior and perception but abstracts from these horizons and develops insight into general structures, which is made possible by a new world disclosure, with a new understanding of "facts", and "truth". Practical reflections relate the acts reflected upon to the practical context and horizon within which they function, but they remain within the realm of circumspection, subordinated to the broader horizons of practice.

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Violence has always been a much debated concept in the history of philosophy, but in the course of the twentieth century a radicalization has taken place in the philosophical reflection on violence. Emmanuel Levinas recognizes violent forces on a transcendental level of perception and knowledge. Jacques Derrida has labelled this as 'transcendental violence'. This chapter analyzes what exactly their views on violence consist of. Then, a critical discussion of these approaches follows, which shows, on the one hand, that the approaches of Levinas and Derrida are so radical that they become contradictory. One of their mistakes is that they see violence as a necessary result of finitude. On the other hand, it is also shown that the concept of violence cannot be discussed without reflection on its functioning on a transcendental level. Keywords: Emmanuel Levinas; Jacques Derrida; radicalization; transcendental violence

In Jan Patocka’s phenomenology of intersubjectivity one can find clear influences of Merleau-Ponty. By both philosophers intersubjectivity is seen as a form of reversibility that has a primacy above personal subjectivity. But Patocka adds to this idea of reversibility the notion of surrender or dedication. In this article it is demonstrated how Patocka’s conception on surrender is developed in his idea of the three movements of human existence. Moreover, the understanding of intersubjectivity through surrender is presented as an important step towards an answer to several points of critique on Merleau-Ponty’s views on intersubjectivity, that were brought to the fore by Claude Lefort. Finally, in this article several aspects of surrender are distinguished in order to give more insight in the functioning and effects of the third movement of human life.

In several texts, Paul Ricoeur has elaborated different concepts of horizon: the horizon of tradition that shapes our perspectives, the horizon as a careful set of determinations of the future, the horizon as a divine call that comes from the future towards us. However, the connection of these three views on the horizon, together with the explicitly Christian interpretation of the third horizon are problematic elements in Ricoeur's thoughts on this topic. In this article his views are confronted with the criticism of Jacques Derrida, who uses a quite different notion of horizon: an enclosing limit that dominates the understanding of what seems to fit in its circle. Finally, the notions of horizon and history as formulated by Jan Patocka provide valuable alternatives to Ricoeur's problematic versions of the horizons of expectation, while leaving the underlying thread of his understanding of horizon intact.

If one makes a comparison between hermeneutics and deconstruction, the first thing that needs to be recognized is the great number of agreements: interpretation is seen by both as starting with a preliminary projection or design that develops possibilities within a text; all designs of a text are contextually determined, historical and finite; author and addressee are both absent in the text; the text develops its own history through its interpretations – and so on. But usually the relation between hermeneutics and deconstruction is depicted as an opposition between identity and difference: hermeneuticians like Gadamer and Ricœur are supposed to be striving for unity, understanding and truth, whereas Derrida and other so-called ‘deconstructivists’ draw attention to difference, otherness, interruptions and aporias that cannot be identified within the hermeneutic circle. There are several strategies to discuss the similarities and differences between hermeneutics and deconstruction.2 Derrida has often described this distinction as one between polysemy and dissemination: polysemy being the effort to maintain the many meanings of one word within the extensive framework of the hermeneutic circle and the hermeneutic horizon, while dissemination is the force that inevitably breaks through this circle. Polysemy and dissemination are thus presented as two different strategies to deal with the plurality of meanings in language. This article discusses the relation between polysemy and dissemination by focusing on the way Paul Ricœur and Jacques Derrida actually use these terms. Since in Derrida’s comments on polysemy and dissemination the notion of horizon plays an important role, this concept will be discussed as well. Two questions are at stake here: what do Ricœur and Derrida mean by these terms: polysemy, dissemination and horizon? And are their approaches really incompatible? First, Ricœur’s views on polysemy and the hermeneutical horizon will be outlined (§§ 1 and 2), then Derrida’s alternative approach will be sketched (§ 3) and critically discussed by taking a closer look at a few of his arguments (§ 4); finally, conclusions will be drawn with regard to the relation between polysemy and dissemination, as well as hermeneutics and deconstruction (§ 5).

In twentieth-century continental philosophy, several evaluative standpoints with regard to the metaphysical tradition can be discerned, each working with a different concept of metaphysics: (1) Successive attempts to overcome metaphysics, taken as a philosophical position with a fixed foundation (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida); (2) the idea that metaphysics, i.e., the effort to reach absolute knowledge, has been left behind quite a while ago (Gadamer, Habermas); (3) metaphysics as a set of recurrent unanswerable basic questions (Merleau-Ponty, Patočka). This is the background against which the relevance of Patočka’s “Negative Platonism” is sketched, highlighting its main distinguishing aspects, especially in a comparison with the work of Derrida, which is very close to the thought of Patočka, though also showing some important differences.

The relation between identity and difference is a much discussed issue in continental philosophy. Within the phenomenological tradition several approaches to this relation stand over and against each other, among them hermeneutics and philosophies of difference. This article sketches their confrontation by choosing two "representatives," Gadamer and Levinas, and by focussing on one term that is used by both of them, namely the metaphor of the horizon. For Gadamer the horizon is an open border of a perspective that always includes other perspectives; for Levinas the horizon is an enclosure that is broken through by the Other. Both views have their strong and weak points. Finally, a third approach, the "asubjective phenomenology" of Jan Patocka, is suggested as a position that combines the strong and convincing ideas of both sides, while avoiding their problems.